For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

~ Aristotle

Energy infrastructure ecological hindsight...

I would like to engage you in a dialog. To start, let me ask all of you a question...

Let us say for the sake of our discussion that you are in charge of transportation infrastructure energy policy for Planet Earth. If you find a world wide government post beyond your capacity of imagination, you can assume your scope is reduced to North America ... just bear with me, I submit the perspective applies equally well regardless of scale. You are about to make public your roadmap for the future.

Of course, your choices are myriad, with many recommending and deselecting aspects to be considered for each.

Of course we still have countless numbers of other matters of equal or perhaps greater import than this, for one example we need to settle on the optimal energy sourcing formula. But for this episode of our dialog, dear reader, please consider this.

If through an exhaustive, comprehensive and decades-spanning analysis process you had narrowed your choices down to the following two, which in your official capacity, would you select and why?

You will direct your planet (...or your personal composting heap, for you backyard scale folks that are still with me) to set as the strategic goal the achievement of an infrastructure based on energy movement and delivery via one of these. Will you select -

• the worldwide transport, storage, distribution and burning of a highly flammable toxic liquid fuel or...
  
• distribution of energy using an electrical grid?
  

I know which one I would choose...

By the way, the car in the picture is the E301 hybrid concept vehicle by Chinese manufacturer Chang'An.


peAce...
topbop!

Look at this for a lift in your perspective...
The Journal of Ecological Anthropology (JEA)
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/jea/

oh, and here find The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World...

Capitalism is evil.

Capitalism is evil. That is the conclusion U.S. documentary maker Michael Moore comes to in his latest movie "Capitalism: A Love Story," which premieres at the Venice film festival Sunday.

Blending his trademark humor with tragic individual stories, archive footage and publicity stunts, the 55-year-old launches an all out attack on the capitalist system, arguing that it benefits the rich and condemns millions to poverty.

"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes.

( © reuters.com)

Read more on Moores film....


peAce...
topbop!

All we can prepare for is extinction...

We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming... Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction.

peAce...
topbop!

read more | digg story

Alicia Keys: Unlocked :: Blender.com

In order to find herself, she had to leave the music industry, take a trip down the Nile and learn how to tear down the walls she spent most of her life building. Read all about here, Blender.com

peAce...
topbop!

read more | digg story

nuclear energy's dirty little secret...

read full story...www.nytimes.com


WASHINGTON — Forgotten but not gone, the waste from more than 100 nuclear reactors that the federal government was supposed to start accepting for burial 10 years ago is still at the reactor sites, at least 20 years behind schedule.

So many problems have beset the plans for disposal of nuclear waste. Government scientists may have falsified documents related to the $58 billion Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project in Nevada. The development could jeopardize the controversial project, which is still being built and is the only repository for the nation's waste from commercial nuclear reactors. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states that there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water".

We have built a hydrocarbon based energy fiasco that is creating strife in so many ways from global wars to global warming. Nuclear power is as ill-thought-out or worse than the existing situation. Don't be fooled.

peAce...
topbop!